Act 09: OF PRISONS AND WALLS

PRISONPrison is a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed or while awaiting trial.1. Opening statement, basically your concept or sales pitch!2. Your methodology or processes3. The theory that you based your work upon4. The experimentation result from your work5. Your concluding statement how your work leads to other's work

1. I was stunned by how strong a person can be when our lives are on the line. We can break boundaries and limits in order to survive as long as we can. Sybil Kathigasu, the main protagonist in this amazing story had been surviving through so much hardship and torture. She went through all kinds of struggles, emotions and suffering when she was captured by the Japanese authorities. She was tortured both physical and mentally, being thrown into a prison and tortured. She had been enduring her suffering on her own; and the thought of her family being thrown into the same situation as her, frightened her more than anything. Because of this she was too afraid to do reveal the secret conversation she had with the communists. When the leader of the communist group wanted to save her from prison, she refused and stayed in prison, she was willing to be stuck in a loop of torture and suffering rather than to reveal the secrets.

2. At first, the installation was built using the mirror to show the loops of an object. This kind of loops can render out the feelings of Sybil being questioned and tortured repeating every single day; and this break any human being, both physically and mentally. She was willing to sacrifice herself to keep the secret safe. Between the mirror, there’s was a vertical gap which allows a light coming in, showing a glimpse of light. A glimpse of hope when the leader of the communist went to save her from the prison, she stopped them from doing so because she worried that many of them will be captured and this would cause a lot of trouble to them. The wooden block that passed through the mirror is to show the feeling of Sybil as she was trapped inside the prison. The wooden block cannot be removed out of the mirror because it was stucked by the nails. The nails represented as the torture which the Japanese had done to her. As she wanted to get out from the prison, she was stuck and willing to sacrifice herself and being stuck in the loops.

3. The theory of my work is to basically express the feeling of Sybil inside of prison, the feeling of her breaking out of prison. However, it’s not going to help because she was powerless to do so in the situation she was in. She had all kinds of feelings at the moment after all the struggle, the suffering, and the thought of her being so helpless when she was in prison. She wanted to protect her love ones and was willing to be stuck in the torturing loops. This makes us feel as if we are missing out on what God had planned for us; it’s like as if we are stagnant, and our lives are pointless.

4. The image of the wooden block inside the mirror was hard to adjust to the desired level, and the mirror needed to be cut to get a perfect shape for the wooden block and this needed to be tried many times just to get a perfect fit for the wooden block. However, cutting the mirror was not an easy thing to do.